Project Management of Production Line Automation: A Comparative Analysis of Project Management in Brazil and Colombia

This article aims to evaluate the production line automation projects developed by Brazilian and Colombian companies from the Project Management perspective, through the analysis of the application degree of PMBOK processes, to understand how formal techniques are being employed in these countries and also to identify improvement opportunities, when necessary. Data were collected through a survey. The similarity index between the ten processes, with the highest application degree in the Brazilian and Colombian samples, was 70%. For the processes with the lowest application degree, the similarity index was 60%. No similar study was found in the literature.     

Performance typologies of new product projects

New product success is a vital but elusive goal for many firms. The last two decades have witnessed numerous studies into new product successes and failures in an attempt to uncover what makes a winner. Indeed, myriad characteristics, factors, and practices have been found that appear to discriminate between successful and unsuccessful new products.With few exceptions, much of this research has tended to view new product performance on a unidimensional continuum, usually financial performance (e.g., profitability). Whereas immediate profitability is no doubt an admirable goal, there are other ways of looking at a new product's performance—for example, degree of technical success, time-to-market, and its overall impact on the company.The current investigation takes a broader view of new product success. A number of measures of new product performance were captured, rather than just the single measure continuum; this resulted in a performance map with two major and quite independent underlying dimensions of performance. A typology of performance was then developed—a classification of new product projects by how well they performed: five scenarios or clusters of projects are identified on this map, each with its unique performance characteristics. We then investigate in detail each project type and probe what drives the performances of these five different clusters of projects: that is, what makes for new product success of these five project types, when success is measured in different ways. The study was undertaken in world class multinationals in the chemical industry in four countries, but its results appear to have validity across a broad spectrum of industry.     

Corporate Hedging: The Relevance of Contract Specifications and Banking Relationships

This article examines the contribution of hedging to firm valueand the cost of hedging in a unified framework. Optimal hedgingand firm value are explicitly linked to firm risk, the typeof debt covenants and the relative priority of the hedging contract.It is shown that in some cases hedging is possible only if thecounterparty to the forward contract also holds a significantportion of the debt. Also, the spread in the hedging contractreduces the optimal amount of hedging to less than the minimum-variancehedge ratio. Among other results this article elucidates whysome firms hedge using forward contracts while other firms hedgein the futures markets, as well as why higher priority forwardcontracts are more efficient hedging vehicles. JEL Classificationnumbers: G13, G22 and G33.     

Tourism and the Australian economy

Consideration of the economic significance of tourism requires synthesis of a discrete tourism ‘industry’ from selected sectors of the economy and identification of its component activities which may then be used to relate expenditure by tourists, sectorally and spatially, to other elements in the economy. This approach is applied to create a profile of the Australian tourism industry at a national level and shows that tourism contributes a significant proportion to GDP and employs at least 3% of the labour force. This is comparable with the UK and other developed countries.     

Asymmetric Information and the Predictability of Real Estate Returns

This article examines the relation between systematic price changes and the heterogeneity of investors information sets in real estate asset markets. The empirical implications rely on a theoretical economy in which information asymmetry alters the dynamic relation between returns and trading volume. We employ a filter-rule methodology to determine predictability in returns and augment the return-based conditioning set with trading volume. The additional conditioning information is necessary since the model is underspecified when predictability is based on returns alone. Our results provide new insight into the coexistence of informational and noninformational exchange in the speculative markets for real estate assets. Specifically, we find that the predictability of real estate returns is generally more indicative of portfolio rebalancing effects than an adverse-selection problem. These results are unique in addressing the time-variation in information asymmetry.     

A new contract for welfare: partnership in pensions

The government's Green Paper proposes reducing state pension costs whilst encouraging private sector provision. The success of the proposed ‘stakeholder pension schemes’ depends on regulation. However, regulation can penalise those it is intended to protect. This is a sensitive issue, since stakeholder pension schemes are expected to attract financially vulnerable, lower paid, employees. Whilst the flat rate accrual of the state second pension confers some benefit, certain groups are put in a difficult position by the retention of means-tested benefits.